Been going out past midnight to capture these little fuckers that have been constantly eating my plants (and flowers). I got five of them the first night, three more the next night. I think I’ve got them all but there may be unhatched eggs around that will eventually turn into adults. I will perhaps check again next week to make sure none of them left…even though I’m sure they will be back. =(

On another note, went to the Halo Reach launch event in downtown last Sat. Major disappointment. 2.5 hrs of lining up despite having a “VIP” line bypass access. Didn’t get a UNSC t-shirt since they only had 300 of them and they were all given away to people who were in front of us. Well we got to play a laser tag game where we shot Convenent/alien forces, kind of fun I guess. I still can’t get over the fact that random people got the t-shirt but Andrew and I and our group didn’t get shit. Sigh.

Just sold all the shares on my first ever stock trade! - it was a little scary. I bought NVDA(nVidia) at 8.92 and sold at 10.10, a 13% increase, not too bad for a first-timer I guess. I’ve been reading a book called “The Neatest Little Guide To Stock Market Investing”, it seems to be quite good and helpful so far, with very straight forward examples to follow and also a detailed collection of thoughts from a few of the world’s best investors. It’s easy to read but I have a feeling that in order to put the concepts into use it’ll probably take me a long time - consider that my budget is so limited. The technical terms are kind of confusing, even though I think I may get a better understanding in the coming days. The internet also seem to have unlimited amount of resources about trading. One I found useful today was www.investopedia.com, I have yet to spare time to read it though. Don’t think I’ll be buying another stock anytime soon without attempting to do some actual analysis on them while referencing the book. This is going to be fun, I think.

Finally got this lens. $900USD from ebay. Made in Japan. Been wanting this lens for the past 1.5 years but couldn’t justify the price. Well I wasn’t really that much into “bokeh” and fixed primes, not until lately I started to care more about image qualities. Does every photographer eventually ditches their zooms and opt for the primes? I still love my zoom lenses but maybe one day, I’ll be doing all primes, who knows.

Anyway the lens is heavy - weights about the same as my 12-60mm zoom, kind of crazy. I took it out for some sample shots, so far so good, except that the auto-focus is kind of slow and sometimes it’s not quite accurate. There could be a learning curve for this lens, afterall it’s no fun being able to utilize its best right up front. The bokeh is amazing! In fact the aperture is a little “too big” during the day, when it’s really bright doing f/1.4 requires a shutter speed of > 1/8000 sec! This lens’s opened up a brand new world to me and I can just imagine the variety of pics that I can take using it.

Today I had my first dance lesson in life, with Wendy. It was a small class with 9 people I think, and we had a chance to learn “cha cha”. I think the underlying routine isn’t that difficult when you see someone doing it but when you actually do it yourself you know how hard it really is. But I think it’s something that once you get the hang of it it’ll become automatic…pretty much just like any other thing, I guess. I’m actually glad that most of the students weren’t much better than I was so I didn’t have to be the worst in the class, lol.

Have been a long while since I wanted to sell my photographers on stock image sites but I never had a chance to do it. Today I got a chance to clear up one item on my to-do list that is to sign up for these sites. Most of them requires an annoying registration process which includes uploading copy of your ID, answering bunch of questions as a form of a “quiz” to make sure you “fully understand” the terms…etc. What surprised me was that these sites usually don’t want landscape/nature/scenery type of images, and the fact is that the bulk of my best images fall within those categories…. I don’t care, if they want images of sports I’ll go shoot sport, if they want still life I’ll do so, nothing is too challenging for me in terms of taking photographs!

And then I had a cup of “V8″ veggie juice for the first time in my life - it actually tastes okay. I’ve always avoided it as I generally dislike tomatoes and veggies. I had always wonder how people can actually drink up tomatoes, and the puree looks gross. I don’t know, I guess I really need to eat more veggie/green stuff so drinking veggie juice would be a good start. It may magically cure my bad/dry skin condition..who knows.

Miyavi, “Guitar God” in Japan. I’ve heard of him years ago but somehow I rejected him and his songs since he looked slutry and so on. I somehow came across images of his wife - Melody - and somehow I stumbled upon a link to his video “Selfish Love”. I admit that I was speechless seeing his guitar performance - extreme unique style and god-like technique, and then I realized he wrote all of his songs, just crazy good. He’s pretty much all laid back when he plays his songs, almost like these perfect notes just somehow burst out from his fingers and guitar. I checked out a couple of his songs like the 世紀型行進曲 from his debut single…crazy skills and super cool riffs. I’m impressed.